Notes

After almost 160 years, we’re running our first-ever Instagram contest. The September 2017 issue will be in mailboxes and on newsstands within the next week, and we want to see where you’re reading your Atlantic magazine.

It’s easy to enter: Snap a picture of you (and your friends! Family! Pets! Get as creative as you’d like with it) reading your copy of the September issue, and share it on Instagram throughout the month of August, using this hashtag: #ReadingMyAtlantic. We’ll select a winner in early September—the prize includes a one-year digital subscription, a limited-edition Woolly-Mammoth tote bag, and a limited-edition poster of the “My President Was Black” cover, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The winner’s post will also be shared from our account, so be sure to give us a follow.

We can’t wait to see where you’re taking your copy of The Atlantic—and the placesThe Atlantic might be taking you.

Emily Jan / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

Full official contest rules below:

#ReadingMyAtlantic Contest

OFFICIAL RULES

1. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR TO WIN. SUBJECT TO APPLICABLE FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL AND MUNICIPAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

2. Eligibility. Subject to the additional restrictions below, the #ReadingMyAtlantic Contest (the “Contest”) is open to legal U.S. residents of the 50 United States (excluding Puerto Rico) and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older at the time of entry. Employees and their immediate family members (spouse, parent, child, sibling and their respective spouses, regardless of where they reside or those living in the same households, whether or not related) of The Atlantic Monthly Group LLC (“Sponsor”), and its respective parent, affiliates, and subsidiaries are not eligible to enter or win.

3. Contest Period. The Contest will begin at 8:00 AM Eastern Time (“ET”) on August 8, 2017 and end at 11:59 PM ET on September 7, 2017 (the “Contest Period”).

4. How to Enter. The entry period to submit nominations will begin at 8:00 AM ET on August 8, 2017 and end at 11:59 PM ET on August 31, 2017 (the “Entry Period”). To enter, during the Entry Period, post a photo and caption to Instagram of the September 2017 issue of the Atlantic magazine with the hashtag #ReadingMyAtlantic. You may enter up to three photos to the contest. The authorized account holder of the Instagram account used to submit at time of entry will be considered the entrant. All photos must be the sole, original work of the entrant or the entrant must have permission from the rights owner to enter it in the Contest. Photos should be at the highest resolution possible. All entries become property of Sponsor and none will be returned. Contestants acknowledge and agree that Sponsor shall have the right to edit, adapt, modify, reproduce, publish, promote, broadcast, or otherwise display or use entries in any way it sees fit without limitation or compensation to entrants. Sponsor further reserves the right to disqualify any entry that is alleged to infringe on any third-party’s intellectual property rights, or that Sponsor, in its sole discretion, deems obscene, offensive or otherwise inappropriate for viewing by a general audience. Sponsor will not be responsible for incomplete, lost, late, misdirected or illegible entries. By entering, you agree to receive e-mails from Sponsor or those directed by Sponsor. You can opt-out of the receipt of such emails by following the directions on the Contest website or in any email received from Sponsor.

7. Winner Selection. One (1) Winner (“Winner”) will be determined on or about September 7, 2017, as described below. Decisions of judges and Sponsor shall be final and binding in all respects.

One (1) Winner will be selected by a panel of judges (who are selected by Sponsor) from among the eligible entries based on the following criteria: (i) Photo composition (50%), (ii) Creative color and light (40%), and (iii) location and caption (10%). The entrant who receives the highest scores during this judging will be selected as the Winner. In the event of a tie, tied entries will be re-judged based entirely on the “Photo composition” judging criteria.

8. Prizes. One (1) Winner will receive a one-year digital subscription to The Atlantic, a woolly mammoth tote bag, a poster of the January/February 2017 cover, and a The Atlantic sticker (ARV $50.00). Winner is responsible for any additional options and for all applicable taxes. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received.

9. Winner Notification and Acceptance. Winner will be notified on or about 9/7/17 via Instagram direct message. Sponsor will contact during normal business hours. Failure to reach winner after 3 tries or return of prize notification as undeliverable may result in disqualification and an alternate winner may be selected from among all remaining eligible entries. Winner may waive his/her right to receive prize. Prizes are non-assignable and nontransferable. No substitutions allowed by winner. Prizes and individual components of prize packages are subject to availability and Sponsor reserves the right to substitute prizes of equal or greater value. Winners are solely responsible for reporting and payment of any taxes on prizes. Winners may be required to complete an affidavit of eligibility/liability and publicity release (except where prohibited by law) which must be returned as directed by Sponsor. Failure to sign and return the affidavit or release or to comply with any term or condition of these Official Rules may result in a winner’s disqualification, the forfeiture of his or her interest in the prize, and the award of the prize to a substitute winner. Except where prohibited, acceptance of any prize constitutes winner’s consent to the publication of his or her name, biographical information and likeness in any media for any commercial or promotional purpose, without limitation the Internet, or further compensation. Prizes not won and claimed by eligible winners in accordance with these Official Rules will not be awarded and will remain the property of Sponsor.

10. Participation. By participating, entrants agree to be bound by these Official Rules and the decisions of Sponsor. Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify persons found tampering with or otherwise abusing any aspect of this Contest as solely determined by Sponsor. In the event the Contest is compromised by a virus, non-authorized human intervention, tampering or other causes beyond the reasonable control of Sponsor which corrupts or impairs the administration, security, fairness or proper operation of the Contest, Sponsor reserve the right in its sole discretion to suspend, modify or terminate the Contest. Should the Contest be terminated prior to the stated expiration date, Sponsor reserves the right to award prizes based on the entries received before and/or after the termination date, or in such manner as deemed fair and appropriate by Sponsor.

11. Release. By entering the Contest (and, if applicable, by receipt of prize), each entrant agrees to release and hold harmless Sponsor and Instagram and each of their respective parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, distributors, advertising/promotion agencies, and prize suppliers, and each of their respective officers, directors, members, employees and agents (collectively, the “Released Parties”) from and against any claim or cause of action, including, but not limited to, personal injury, death, or damage to or loss of property, arising out of participation in the Contest or, for each Winner, receipt or use or misuse of any prize.

12. Limitations of Liability. The Released Parties are not responsible for: (1) any incorrect or inaccurate information, whether caused by entrants, printing errors or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Contest; (2) technical failures of any kind, including, but not limited to malfunctions, interruptions, or disconnections in phone lines or network hardware or software; (3) unauthorized human intervention in any part of the entry process or the Contest; (4) technical or human error which may occur in the administration of the Contest or the processing of entries; (5) late, lost, undeliverable, damaged or stolen mail; or (6) any injury or damage to persons or property which may be caused, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, from entrant’s participation in the Contest or receipt or use or misuse of any prize. If for any reason an entrant's entry is confirmed to have been erroneously deleted, lost, or otherwise destroyed or corrupted, entrant’s sole remedy is another entry in the Contest unless it is not possible to award another entry due to discontinuance or completion of the Contest. No more than the stated number of prizes will be awarded.

13. Copyright. By entering the Contest, each entrant grants to Sponsor a non-exclusive, royalty-free and irrevocable right and license to publish, print, edit or otherwise use the contestant’s submitted entry, in whole or in part, for any purpose and in any manner or media (including, without limitation, the Internet) throughout the world in perpetuity, and to license others to do so, all without limitation or further compensation. Each contestant further agrees that if his/her entry is selected by Sponsor as the winning entry, he/she will sign any additional license or release that Sponsor may require.

14. Choice of Law. These rules shall be governed by and shall be construed in accordance with the laws of the District of Columbia. Any dispute, controversy or other claim arising out of these rules shall be resolved in an appropriate court within the District of Columbia.

15. Construction. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of these rules shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision. In the event that any such provision is determined to be invalid or otherwise unenforceable, these rules shall be construed in accordance with their terms as if the invalid or unenforceable provision was not contained therein.

16. Sponsor, Winners List and Official Rules. The #ReadingMyAtlantic Contest is sponsored by the Atlantic Monthly Group LLC, 600 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20037 (“Sponsor”). The decisions of Sponsor regarding the selection of winners and all other aspects of the Contest shall be final and binding in all respects. Sponsor will not be responsible for typographical, printing or other inadvertent errors in these Official Rules or in other materials relating to the Contest. This Contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram. For a list of winners (available after September 30, 2017) or a copy of these Official Rules, visit www.theatlantic.com/instagramcontest or send a self-addressed, stamped envelope (Vermont residents need not affix return postage) to “Winners List/Official Rules” (as applicable), #ReadingMyAtlantic Contest, 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20037. If you have any questions regarding this Contest, please contact Emily Jan at ejan@theatlantic.com or call 202-266-7000.

As winters grow warmer in North America, thirsty ticks are on the move.

We found the moose calf half an hour in. He lay atop thin snow on a gentle slope sheltered by the boughs of a big, black spruce, curled up as a dog would on a couch. He had turned his long, gaunt head to rest against his side and closed his eyes. He might have been sleeping. The day before, April 17, 2018, when the GPS tracker on the moose’s collar stopped moving for six hours, this stillness had caused both an email and a text to alert Jake Debow, a Vermont state field biologist who stood next to me now with Josh Blouin, another state biologist, that moose No. 75 had either shucked his collar or died.

“You want pictures before we start?” Debow asked me. He’s the senior of the two young biologists, both still in grad school, both in their late 20s, young and strong and funny, from families long in the north country, both drawn to the job by a love of hunting and being outside. Debow had always wanted to be a game warden; in college, he “fell in love with the science.” His Vermont roots go back 10 generations. “Jake Debow,” Josh told me, “is about as Vermont as you can get.” It was Debow’s second season on the moose project, and Blouin’s first. This was the sixth calf, of 30 collared, that they’d found sucked to death by ticks this season. They were here to necropsy the carcass, send the tissues to a veterinary pathology lab in New Hampshire, and try to figure out as much as possible about how and why these calves were dying.

For several months, Cara has been working up the courage to approach her mom about what she saw on Instagram. Not long ago, the 11-year-old—who, like all the other kids in this story, is referred to by a pseudonym—discovered that her mom had been posting photos of her, without prior approval, for much of her life. “I’ve wanted to bring it up. It’s weird seeing myself up there, and sometimes there’s pics I don’t like of myself,” she said.

Like most other modern kids, Cara grew up immersed in social media. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were all founded before she was born; Instagram has been around since she was a toddler. While many kids may not yet have accounts themselves, their parents, schools, sports teams, and organizations have been curating an online presence for them since birth. The shock of realizing that details about your life—or, in some cases, an entire narrative of it—have been shared online without your consent or knowledge has become a pivotal experience in the lives of many young teens and tweens.

A significant minority seldom or never meet people from another race, and they prize sameness, not difference.

Most Americans do not live in a totalizing bubble. They regularly encounter people of different races, ideologies, and religions. For the most part, they view these interactions as positive, or at least neutral.

Yet according to a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and The Atlantic, a significant minority of Americans do not live this way. They seldom or never meet people of another race. They dislike interacting with people who don’t share their political beliefs. And when they imagine the life they want for their children, they prize sameness, not difference. Education and geography seemed to make a big difference in how people think about these issues, and in some cases, so did age.

The Bulwark is on a mission to name and shame President Trump's most high-status supporters.

Charlie Sykes is sitting behind a desk in a sparse, disheveled office—blank walls lined with empty filing cabinets, windows covered with crooked blinds—as he tries to conjure the perfect metaphor for The Bulwark, the anti-Trump conservative news site he recently helped start.

“We are the ultimate wilderness!” he declares to me.

But that doesn’t sound quite lonely enough for the political niche they’re occupying, so he tries again: “We’re on a desert island.”

Sykes continues to riff like this in his chirpy, midwestern accent, comparing The Bulwark’s writers to a band of “Somali pirates,” and then to a contingent of “guerrilla fighters.” He’s so enthusiastic about the exercise that before long I am tossing out my own overwrought suggestions. Perhaps, I muse at one point, they are soldiers on the final front of the Republican Civil War—making one last stand before the forces of Trumpism complete their conquest.

I was one of many people who found Jussie Smollett’s story a little off from the beginning. Two white men in ski masks are out in 10-degree weather in the middle of the night, equipped with a bottle of bleach or something like it and a rope that they fashioned into a mock noose. These thugs, who shouted Trump slogans as well as racist and homophobic slurs, seemed to know who Smollett was on sight, meaning they were aficionados of the splashy black soap opera Empire, on which Smollett is a main character. Somehow they were aware that Smollett, prominent but hardly on the A-list as celebrities go, was gay.

Yes, my skepticism made me feel a little guilty. We are justly sensitized to violence against people for being black and for being gay in the wake of incidents I need not name. We are also just past watching legions of people who should have known better refuse to credit Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe fear and trauma distorted Smollett’s memory somewhat? Maybe the media were getting some of the details wrong? Wait and see, I and others thought.

How do you offer intelligence to a president who’s not interested—and keep your job?

Dan Coats was nervous. Ahead of his very first threat briefing to Congress nearly two years ago, he was having trouble keeping straight what he could say in the unclassified part and what he had to save for the classified portion. He had retired from the Senate just months before—now he’d been thrust into an entirely different kind of job as the director of national intelligence. In the words of one former colleague, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, he was a “fish out of water,” horrified that he might get something wrong.

What he wasn’t worried about, this person said, was the kind of conflict with the president that erupted after his most recent threat briefing this past January, when he and other intelligence officials gave testimony on issues like North Korea, Iran, and Russia that contradicted statements Trump has made. Trump’s lingering anger about that testimony, ahead of his upcoming North Korea summit, has now revived speculation that Trump might fire Coats. But what Coats wanted to do two years ago, and by many accounts has faithfully tried to do since, was represent the views of the intelligence community to a president not always inclined to hear them. That is at once the key requirement of his job and potentially the one that puts him in the most peril.

The failed attempt to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to New York was a debacle, exposing a rift among progressives so large that it occupied half of last Sunday’s Meet the Press broadcast. When a local economic-development deal garners that kind of national press attention—when the head of the DNC is grilled about it by Chuck Todd—it is clear that this is about much more than local tax policy and a helipad.

I offered conditional support for Amazon’s arrival in New York when the deal was announced in November, while acknowledging the need to fix the deal’s problems. I was immediately labeled by the denizens of Twitter “a corporate shill,” “paid by Bezos,” or, my personal favorite, “a writer from Breitbart.” So convinced are some of my fellow progressives of their own rectitude, that they offer no more room for dissent than the modern GOP.

It’s like the flu: uncomfortable, occasionally deadly, but constantly with us.

Growing up, I used to think anti-Semitism was like the black death: tragic, nightmarish, and historic. It had wiped out millions of people. It was theoretically terrifying. But only occasional outbreaks in poor and faraway countries remained. It had ruined the life of my grandmother, but it would not be part of mine.

But now I realize that anti-Semitism is actually like the flu: uncomfortable, sickly, occasionally deadly, but constantly with us. Every few decades, it mutates into an epidemic. The rest of the time it lingers, producing headaches, sweats, and dizzy spells. Not killing us, just wearing us down.

As a British Jew, with dual French citizenship and Jewish family in Paris, I have felt the cold now for some time; I’m trying to remember when I first felt it coming on. Was it when the Labour splitter George Galloway was elected as a member of Parliament in East London on the back of an anti-Semitic campaign in 2005? Or was it when Ilan Halimi was abducted and murdered by anti-Semites in Paris in 2006?

In caves and labyrinths, humans’ cerebral navigation equipment is mostly useless. That can spark panic or free the mind.

On the evening of December 18, 2004, in the hamlet of Madiran, in southwestern France, a man named Jean-Luc Josuat-Vergès wandered into the tunnels of an abandoned mushroom farm and got lost. Josuat-Vergès, who was 48 and employed as a caretaker at a local health center, had been depressed. Leaving his wife and 14-year-old son at home, he’d driven up into the hills with a bottle of whiskey and a pocketful of sleeping pills. After steering his Land Rover into the large entrance tunnel of the mushroom farm, he’d clicked on his flashlight and stumbled into the dark.

The tunnels, which had been originally dug out of the limestone hills as a chalk mine, comprised a five-mile-long labyrinth of blind corridors, twisting passages, and dead ends. Josuat-Vergès walked down one corridor, turned, then turned again. His flashlight battery slowly dimmed, then died; shortly after, as he tromped down one soggy corridor, his shoes were sucked off his feet and swallowed by the mud. Josuat-Vergès stumbled barefoot through the maze, groping in pitch-darkness, searching in vain for the exit.

Long ago, it could have required the president to meet certain requirements priorto unlocking this broad authority.

Who empowered President Donald Trump to declare that “a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States”? Congress. Congress authorized such sweeping authority. Congress failed to impose meaningful constraints or define “national emergency.” Congress is failing to maintain accountability by abiding by its six-month mandatory reviews of such emergencies. And it is Congress that has the power to terminate Trump’s proclamation by a joint resolution of both chambers of Congress. According to recent reports, the House is going to introduce a joint resolution to do just that on Friday. The Senate would need to sign on. But since the president can veto this joint resolution, both chambers will need a two-thirds majority—an unlikely scenario in this political climate.

As winters grow warmer in North America, thirsty ticks are on the move.

We found the moose calf half an hour in. He lay atop thin snow on a gentle slope sheltered by the boughs of a big, black spruce, curled up as a dog would on a couch. He had turned his long, gaunt head to rest against his side and closed his eyes. He might have been sleeping. The day before, April 17, 2018, when the GPS tracker on the moose’s collar stopped moving for six hours, this stillness had caused both an email and a text to alert Jake Debow, a Vermont state field biologist who stood next to me now with Josh Blouin, another state biologist, that moose No. 75 had either shucked his collar or died.

“You want pictures before we start?” Debow asked me. He’s the senior of the two young biologists, both still in grad school, both in their late 20s, young and strong and funny, from families long in the north country, both drawn to the job by a love of hunting and being outside. Debow had always wanted to be a game warden; in college, he “fell in love with the science.” His Vermont roots go back 10 generations. “Jake Debow,” Josh told me, “is about as Vermont as you can get.” It was Debow’s second season on the moose project, and Blouin’s first. This was the sixth calf, of 30 collared, that they’d found sucked to death by ticks this season. They were here to necropsy the carcass, send the tissues to a veterinary pathology lab in New Hampshire, and try to figure out as much as possible about how and why these calves were dying.

For several months, Cara has been working up the courage to approach her mom about what she saw on Instagram. Not long ago, the 11-year-old—who, like all the other kids in this story, is referred to by a pseudonym—discovered that her mom had been posting photos of her, without prior approval, for much of her life. “I’ve wanted to bring it up. It’s weird seeing myself up there, and sometimes there’s pics I don’t like of myself,” she said.

Like most other modern kids, Cara grew up immersed in social media. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were all founded before she was born; Instagram has been around since she was a toddler. While many kids may not yet have accounts themselves, their parents, schools, sports teams, and organizations have been curating an online presence for them since birth. The shock of realizing that details about your life—or, in some cases, an entire narrative of it—have been shared online without your consent or knowledge has become a pivotal experience in the lives of many young teens and tweens.

A significant minority seldom or never meet people from another race, and they prize sameness, not difference.

Most Americans do not live in a totalizing bubble. They regularly encounter people of different races, ideologies, and religions. For the most part, they view these interactions as positive, or at least neutral.

Yet according to a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and The Atlantic, a significant minority of Americans do not live this way. They seldom or never meet people of another race. They dislike interacting with people who don’t share their political beliefs. And when they imagine the life they want for their children, they prize sameness, not difference. Education and geography seemed to make a big difference in how people think about these issues, and in some cases, so did age.

The Bulwark is on a mission to name and shame President Trump's most high-status supporters.

Charlie Sykes is sitting behind a desk in a sparse, disheveled office—blank walls lined with empty filing cabinets, windows covered with crooked blinds—as he tries to conjure the perfect metaphor for The Bulwark, the anti-Trump conservative news site he recently helped start.

“We are the ultimate wilderness!” he declares to me.

But that doesn’t sound quite lonely enough for the political niche they’re occupying, so he tries again: “We’re on a desert island.”

Sykes continues to riff like this in his chirpy, midwestern accent, comparing The Bulwark’s writers to a band of “Somali pirates,” and then to a contingent of “guerrilla fighters.” He’s so enthusiastic about the exercise that before long I am tossing out my own overwrought suggestions. Perhaps, I muse at one point, they are soldiers on the final front of the Republican Civil War—making one last stand before the forces of Trumpism complete their conquest.

I was one of many people who found Jussie Smollett’s story a little off from the beginning. Two white men in ski masks are out in 10-degree weather in the middle of the night, equipped with a bottle of bleach or something like it and a rope that they fashioned into a mock noose. These thugs, who shouted Trump slogans as well as racist and homophobic slurs, seemed to know who Smollett was on sight, meaning they were aficionados of the splashy black soap opera Empire, on which Smollett is a main character. Somehow they were aware that Smollett, prominent but hardly on the A-list as celebrities go, was gay.

Yes, my skepticism made me feel a little guilty. We are justly sensitized to violence against people for being black and for being gay in the wake of incidents I need not name. We are also just past watching legions of people who should have known better refuse to credit Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe fear and trauma distorted Smollett’s memory somewhat? Maybe the media were getting some of the details wrong? Wait and see, I and others thought.

How do you offer intelligence to a president who’s not interested—and keep your job?

Dan Coats was nervous. Ahead of his very first threat briefing to Congress nearly two years ago, he was having trouble keeping straight what he could say in the unclassified part and what he had to save for the classified portion. He had retired from the Senate just months before—now he’d been thrust into an entirely different kind of job as the director of national intelligence. In the words of one former colleague, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, he was a “fish out of water,” horrified that he might get something wrong.

What he wasn’t worried about, this person said, was the kind of conflict with the president that erupted after his most recent threat briefing this past January, when he and other intelligence officials gave testimony on issues like North Korea, Iran, and Russia that contradicted statements Trump has made. Trump’s lingering anger about that testimony, ahead of his upcoming North Korea summit, has now revived speculation that Trump might fire Coats. But what Coats wanted to do two years ago, and by many accounts has faithfully tried to do since, was represent the views of the intelligence community to a president not always inclined to hear them. That is at once the key requirement of his job and potentially the one that puts him in the most peril.

The failed attempt to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to New York was a debacle, exposing a rift among progressives so large that it occupied half of last Sunday’s Meet the Press broadcast. When a local economic-development deal garners that kind of national press attention—when the head of the DNC is grilled about it by Chuck Todd—it is clear that this is about much more than local tax policy and a helipad.

I offered conditional support for Amazon’s arrival in New York when the deal was announced in November, while acknowledging the need to fix the deal’s problems. I was immediately labeled by the denizens of Twitter “a corporate shill,” “paid by Bezos,” or, my personal favorite, “a writer from Breitbart.” So convinced are some of my fellow progressives of their own rectitude, that they offer no more room for dissent than the modern GOP.

It’s like the flu: uncomfortable, occasionally deadly, but constantly with us.

Growing up, I used to think anti-Semitism was like the black death: tragic, nightmarish, and historic. It had wiped out millions of people. It was theoretically terrifying. But only occasional outbreaks in poor and faraway countries remained. It had ruined the life of my grandmother, but it would not be part of mine.

But now I realize that anti-Semitism is actually like the flu: uncomfortable, sickly, occasionally deadly, but constantly with us. Every few decades, it mutates into an epidemic. The rest of the time it lingers, producing headaches, sweats, and dizzy spells. Not killing us, just wearing us down.

As a British Jew, with dual French citizenship and Jewish family in Paris, I have felt the cold now for some time; I’m trying to remember when I first felt it coming on. Was it when the Labour splitter George Galloway was elected as a member of Parliament in East London on the back of an anti-Semitic campaign in 2005? Or was it when Ilan Halimi was abducted and murdered by anti-Semites in Paris in 2006?

In caves and labyrinths, humans’ cerebral navigation equipment is mostly useless. That can spark panic or free the mind.

On the evening of December 18, 2004, in the hamlet of Madiran, in southwestern France, a man named Jean-Luc Josuat-Vergès wandered into the tunnels of an abandoned mushroom farm and got lost. Josuat-Vergès, who was 48 and employed as a caretaker at a local health center, had been depressed. Leaving his wife and 14-year-old son at home, he’d driven up into the hills with a bottle of whiskey and a pocketful of sleeping pills. After steering his Land Rover into the large entrance tunnel of the mushroom farm, he’d clicked on his flashlight and stumbled into the dark.

The tunnels, which had been originally dug out of the limestone hills as a chalk mine, comprised a five-mile-long labyrinth of blind corridors, twisting passages, and dead ends. Josuat-Vergès walked down one corridor, turned, then turned again. His flashlight battery slowly dimmed, then died; shortly after, as he tromped down one soggy corridor, his shoes were sucked off his feet and swallowed by the mud. Josuat-Vergès stumbled barefoot through the maze, groping in pitch-darkness, searching in vain for the exit.

Long ago, it could have required the president to meet certain requirements priorto unlocking this broad authority.

Who empowered President Donald Trump to declare that “a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States”? Congress. Congress authorized such sweeping authority. Congress failed to impose meaningful constraints or define “national emergency.” Congress is failing to maintain accountability by abiding by its six-month mandatory reviews of such emergencies. And it is Congress that has the power to terminate Trump’s proclamation by a joint resolution of both chambers of Congress. According to recent reports, the House is going to introduce a joint resolution to do just that on Friday. The Senate would need to sign on. But since the president can veto this joint resolution, both chambers will need a two-thirds majority—an unlikely scenario in this political climate.